Solid Waste

Overview

Waste is generated as part of everyday living when people throw things away that they no longer require. Matamata-Piako is responsible for promoting effective and efficient waste management and waste reduction practices within the district. Refuse collection services are provided to approximately 8,500 households and 800 commercial properties throughout the district.

Our Situation

Landfills

Within Matamata-Piako, Council has three refuse transfer stations, located at Waihou, Morrinsville and Matamata. Each is adjacent to closed, former landfills, which are managed to reduce unfavourable effects on the environment. Waste from the transfer stations is transported out of the district to a privately owned landfill at Tirohia, south of Paeroa.

Compliance of the district’s landfills with their respective resource consent conditions is monitored regularly. Council monitors the amount and quality of leachate from the landfills to nearby surface water bodies, both up and downstream of the landfill location. Council also monitors several sampling bores near the landfills. The groundwater quality at the sampling sites has been good–satisfactory since 2000. Council’s sampling sites achieved a compliance rate of 100 percent with Environment Waikato’s Standards during 2009/10. In 2010/11 the Waihou Refuse Dump and Matamata Landfill had high levels of compliance with their resource consent conditions. The Morrinsville Landfill had partial non compliance, due to monitoring not being undertaken at the agreed intervals, and some monitoring results not being provided. However, there were no environmental concerns: there was no damage in need of urgent attention, and the quality and quantity of leachate pumped from the landfill had remained consistent. From 2012/13 to 2017/18 there was 100% compliance.

Hazardous Waste

There were no reported incidents or spills involving hazardous waste in the district during the 2007/08 - 2009/10 period or in 2011/12. In both the 2010/11 and 2012/13 years there was one spillage of septage on to a roadway. There were no reported incidents in the three years until 2017/18

The Fire and Emergency New Zealand Act 2017, which resulted in the merger of the New Zealand Fire Service with rural fire authorities to form Fire and Emergency New Zealand (FENZ) on 1st July 2017 also added the authority for expanded functions, including hazardous substance incident response. FENZ reported eight incidents during 2017/18 including leaking gas cylinders at business and industrial sites, and hazardous chemical spills at a milk processing plant and from a truck crossing the Kaimai Range.

Quantity of Waste Generated and Recycled

The following graphs show how much waste is being disposed of at Council-operated transfer stations in our district and how much of this waste is being recycled/composted. This excludes waste disposed of in commercially operated landfills.

Overall the amount of waste being disposed of at the waste transfer stations has steadily increased in the last four years. The reduction between 2011/12 and 2012/13 is due to the loss of the Council’s largest private customer that used the Council’s transfer stations to dispose of waste; however, this waste was still sent to landfill.

The percentage of our district’s waste being recycled or composted has increased since 2009/10. However, the graph above detailing the quantity of waste recycled varies from year to year. This is due to variation in the quantity of green waste being composted.

Other waste is collected in addition to the waste stream collected at Council’s transfer stations. Solid waste is also collected from screens at the district’s wastewater treatment plants, and sent directly to the Tirohia Landfill. From 2010/11, this amount is included as an estimate in the “Total Waste to Landfill” figures below.